Terminated Hebrew teacher gets bupkis on bias claim

The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination could not consider an age discrimination charge filed by a Hebrew teacher terminated by a synagogue-based school.

So Superior Court Judge Nancy S. Holtz has ruled.

Gaye Hilsenrath taught from the fall of 1984 to the spring of 2008 at the Temple Emanuel Rabbi Albert I. Gordon Religious School in Newton.

When the school decided to reduce its number of teachers to 12 “lead” teachers, Hilsenrath applied for one of the positions but was unsuccessful in obtaining it.

In response, she filed a charge with the MCAD, claiming that she had been passed over because of her age.

The filing prompted Temple Emanuel to sue, insisting that MCAD lacked jurisdiction to hear Hilsenrath’s claim because of a “ministerial exception” barring the agency from exercising subject matter jurisdiction over disputes “arising out of an employment relationship between a religious institution and a ministerial employee.”

“It remains clear,” Holtz said, “that there is nothing about Hilsenrath’s duties as a teacher at a religious school — taken as a whole — which could be considered secular such that the ministerial exception would not apply to her. …

“While Hilsenrath has attempted to narrow her duties at the religious school to teaching the Hebrew language, the fact that she taught the primary language of the Jewish religion at a non-day school operated by a Jewish synagogue is reflective of her role as a ministerial employee. …

“While the teaching of the Hebrew language in any other school may not necessarily implicate the ministerial exception, it does so in this case where, as articulated in the religious school’s mission statement, the Hebrew language is part and parcel of the students’ study of Jewish prayer, texts and rituals.”